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silverflyer · Mar 30, 2007, 07:32 AM

Every time I start my Macbook Pro from cold, or a restart, I get disk activity after boot for about 5 minutes that brings my computer to a halt. When it is done, it operates normally, but during programs take forever to load and the computer is generally slow overall.

I already disabled all the login items in System Prefs> Accounts>Login Items and the problem still persists.

What can I do to fix this?

C.A.T.S. CEO · Mar 30, 2007, 08:00 AM

I have the same problem with my MacBook (but I have s few startup items)

silverflyer · Mar 30, 2007, 10:00 AM

It is very frustrating, I am hoping someone will tell us what is going on so we can stop it.

zaghahzag · Mar 30, 2007, 10:43 AM

i have some stupid backup software that likes to hit the HD constantly for no apparent reason. I quit it every time I start up. Maybe you have something similar installed?

is your HD full? HDs go a lot slower on OSX as they fill up. If you are hitting VM and you have a full HD it will go really really slow. how much ram do you have?

sieb · Mar 30, 2007, 11:31 AM

Prebinding?

mfbernstein · Mar 30, 2007, 01:46 PM

How much RAM do you have? What does Activity Monitor show during this period (ie which processes are using a lot of RAM and or CPU time)? It's possible that data is being paged in and out of VM storage, though I've not seen this problem myself.

silverflyer · Mar 30, 2007, 07:10 PM

My HDD has only 28.24 gb used and 83.23 free. I have 2 gigs of ram.

Could ibackup be causing this? I don't think it runs at all unless I tell it to.

What is prebinding?

I know the activity monitor shows a lot of disk activity during startup, but not which programs are doing more than they should. None of them looked like they were causing this. What should I look for?

firefly · Mar 30, 2007, 09:45 PM

I am 99% sure that the culprit is Unsanity's Application Enhancer, which you must have installed (it could have been bundled with something). The solution is simple: download AE from [unsanity] Welcome - Unsanity - Makers of Haxies, small useful utilities that enhance and redefine how Mac OS X works., run the installer and click uninstall.

For those of you who want to know what's going on, read on. Apparently Unsanity decided to instruct new versions of Application Enhancer to run 'update prebinding' (which is the same thing as the optimizing process that occurs after a software update) at every boot in order to correct problems with Rosetta. Personally, I got Application Enhancer as a little surprise along with Logitech Control Center (another crap piece of software); it was the developer version, so there was no control panel and I had no idea it existed on my system till I eventually ran the AE installer. I was furious about all of this, since it took so long to diagnose, and even reinstalled Tiger along the way. So I hope I'll save you a bit of a headache here!

silverflyer · Mar 30, 2007, 11:55 PM

I did learn that I had two prebinding tasks running at startup, I figured out how to look at all processes in the activity monitor window.

Although I did not have all of Application Enhancer on my comp, I had enough of a remnant from a backup recovery that it was probably the cause. Unfortunately, before I saw this I decided to use my applecare and let them deal with it...

Well, after having me reset the pram or something, we booted from the CD and verified the disk, that did nothing, disk was fine. His only other option was to do an archive and re-install. I did that, and it fixed it, but I seem to have lost nearly another 9GBs of space on my drive. Anyone know how to recover that?

silverflyer · Mar 31, 2007, 12:09 AM

I figured out where the Application Enhancer came from...

Audio Hijack Pro. Guess what software I wont be buying.

mfbernstein · Mar 31, 2007, 08:42 AM

9GB sounds a bit excessive, but if you're happy with your reinstall, you can go ahead and delete the folder "Previous System" on your drive.

As for Audio Hijack Pro, I believe unless you use the 'instant hijack feature' it does not install APE.

silverflyer · 02:34 PM

Thank you for that Info mfbernstein. You are right, Audio Hijack Pro does not install it unless you want that feature, but as far as I know, it also wont capture system sounds without it installed.

urzsite · Mar 31, 2007, 07:16 PM

What is the big deal with "Application Enhancer" ? Is it a tast that takes a lot of resources ? I have 1 running... but how do I tell where it came from ? I don't have any unsanity products.

silverflyer · Mar 31, 2007, 07:28 PM

I just looked through some of my recently installed programs to see if I could find it, and sure enough there it was.

Maybe you could spotlight search it too, I don't know if it would show up or not.